Hillary tells Irish American FBI director Comey to put up or shut up

FBI Director James Comey has reopened the investigation into Hillary Clinton's handling of emails while secretary of state.Wiki Commons/Gage Skidmore (Flickr)

It looks like the 2016 election could be decided by a big, strapping six-foot-eight man from the Irish enclave of Yonkers, New York, also known as FBI Director James Comey.

Quite how Comey, 58, got into this position is unknown, suffice to say there are two very different views of him.

Donald Trump has embraced him as his best buddy only days after he slated him. Hillary Clinton however is hardly lighting candles.

In her brief press conference, she dared him to come forward with what evidence he has. She seemed pretty confident he has nothing or else she’s the greatest poker player in America. I can’t imagine however, given that it is the computer of Huma Abedin, her closest associate, that she doesn’t have a fair idea of what is in the e-mails.

It was as naked a stand off between the judicial and political branches of government as there has ever been. Clinton was daring him to convict her a variation of “where’s the beef.”

The reason for the standoff of course is a dramatic letter to Republican House leaders that the FBI is investigating possible new evidence in the Hillary Clinton case.

It is unprecedented for a Justice Department official to go public with an announcement on a possible breach of law by one of the two contenders for the presidency in the run up to an election. There has always been a sixty-day rule of hands - off major announcements according to experts.

It is clear why. The FBI do not want to be accused of influencing an election....that seems to be left to the Russians. We don't know yet by the way whether Putin’s puppets are being investigated by the FBI because of the sensitivity of that issue. How sensitive must an election for the leader of the Free World be then?

Comey and the FBI have indeed influenced this election however. Hillary has gone in the course of an afternoon from a shoo-in to a question mark as to how badly this will impact voters.

The story gets more curious by the hour. There is a fog of war feeling around the entire issue.

Most assumed Comey was reopening the investigation. But Comey was not announcing a new investigation, merely that a possible new lead could at some point lead to a new investigation.

After a year investigating the alleged e-mail scandal Comey closed it down saying Clinton had been careless but not criminally negligent in how she handled her classified material.

You would really think a year is enough time to examine all and every lead. Not for Comey it seems. He’s back for extra helpings.

“This is particularly troubling since so many questions are unanswered,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California. “It’s unclear whether these emails have already been reviewed or if Secretary Clinton sent or received them. In fact, we don’t even know if the F.B.I. has these emails in its possession.

Comey, who is a towering six-foot-eight tall, was born to an Irish Catholic family in Yonkers, New York, and shortly after moved to Allendale, New Jersey, where he spent his formative years. He is the second of four children, his father worked at corporate real estate and his mother was a homemaker and computer consultant, according to his profile in New York Magazine.

Comey was at Georgetown University and delivered a rare speech by a federal law enforcement leader on the issue of race. He explained how he grew up in an Irish American family, first in Yonkers, New York, and later in New Jersey.

He stated “I am descended from Irish immigrants. A century ago, the Irish knew well how American society – and law enforcement – viewed them: as drunks, ruffians, and criminals. Law enforcement’s biased view of the Irish lives on in the nickname we still use for the vehicle that transports groups of prisoners; it is, after all, the “ Paddy Wagon.”

“The Irish had tough times, but little compares to the experience on our soil of black Americans. That experience should be part of every American’s consciousness, and law enforcement’s role in that experience – including in recent times – must be remembered. It is our cultural inheritance.

“There is a reason I require all new agents and analysts to study the FBI’s interaction with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and to visit his memorial in Washington as part of their training. And there is a reason I keep on my desk a copy of Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s approval of J. Edgar Hoover’s request to wiretap Dr. King.

“It is a single page. The entire application is five sentences long, it is without fact or substance, and is predicated on the naked assertion that there is “communist influence in the racial situation.”The reason I do those things is to ensure that we remember our mistakes and that we learn from them.”

FBI Director James Comey has reopened the investigation into Hillary Clinton's handling of emails while secretary of state.Wiki Commons/Gage Skidmore (Flickr)